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UK treasury chief: Economy should be main focus in Brexit

The Brexit discussions are due to begin on Monday when the British minister in charge of the process, David Davis, meets the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, in Brussels.The first round of Brexit talks will start on Monday (19 June), officials confirmed after negotiators met in brussels on Thursday to hammer out the details of the procedure.But given May will have a limited majority in the House of Commons, even with the backing of the Northern Irish party, opposition parties such as Labour and the Liberal Democrats have their own agendas to pursue and will seek to amend any law that comes before Parliament connected to Britain’s withdrawal from Europe.The announcement by Andrea Leadsom suggests that Prime Minister Theresa May and the Northern Ireland-based Democratic Unionist Party have struck an agreement or are close to one.The others have ruled out letting Ms May negotiate in person with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and others.While May has repeatedly said she wants a special and deep partnership with the club Britain joined in 1973, she has also laced her assurances with threats that a breakdown of talks could harm security cooperation.Ms May has been under pressure since the election cost her her majority to consider “softer” Brexit options than the clean break she proposed from the EU single market and customs union. Would we then say they shouldn’t be in government in the Republic?Talks to restore confidence took a back seat in recent days as the political focus largely shifted to London and the DUP’s deal to prop up the Conservatives at Westminster.An election in March saw the Protestant, pro-British DUP finish narrowly ahead of Catholic socialists Sinn Fein.May now faces the task of satisfying both the pro-European and euroskeptic factions of her party, keeping Northern Ireland calm and negotiating a divorce with 27 other European Union members whose combined economic might is more than five times that of Britain. “They can’t have it both ways, it has to be dealt with sensibly”, she said. British negotiators believe the European Union might accept such a deal because it would mean Europe’s trade in goods with the United Kingdom – in which the European Union runs a surplus – would not be disrupted by Brexit, the newspaper said.As European leaders tried to fathom exactly how Britain would begin the negotiations, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Germany wanted a Brexit deal that would limit negative consequences for the bloc but also did not want it to weaken Britain.The EU’s executive Commission said in a statement Friday that the first round of negotiations in Brussels will be part of a “sequenced approach to the talks”.